Launching an Edtech company, Part 3: OER

My highest priority in life? To have a lasting impact on educational opportunities for students everywhere. Lofty, sure. But it's a realistic goal this day and age. Unfortunately, educational technology today often hides content behind registrations, passwords and other digital "walls" that prevent students and other teachers from engaging the content and benefiting from the good work of a great teacher.

I think that's inefficiency in education (because perfect knowledge, for all of those engaged in education/learning would mean that all resources are open to all students/teachers). When content is protected behind a password, course enrollment key, pending membership to X social network, etc., those that might be seeking it are barred from it.

Now, some social networks are providing completely open tools that help to hurdle this issue. Twitter is a great example where all content, is totally open, even to non-registered users. That's fantastic, but it's unfortunate that the entire user base is not necessarily seeking the upward march of humanity. A twitter-like apparatus for education could achieve both goals:

1. creating a user base that is invested in education and learning
2. opening all resources to all learners so that they may create, engage, pursue and remix any and all topics and subjects that interest them
3. (bonus, I realize I said "both goals") the system could provide a "back-end" for regulating and managing real-world outcomes (grades, assignments, etc.) without preventing virtual access.

This is the inherent design we based http://coursefeeds.com around. An open, social, educational platform that does not prevent students from seeking information, role models, teachers or content that they are interested in. Students and teachers can follow/subscribe to content that drives them (no more and no less). And for teachers that want to make their content available to the world, public in all it's glory...well they can do that too.

Sean (http://seanbehan.com) is putting some of the finishing touches on a calendar view right now for managing assignments and events from course feeds, but neither of us can wait to let teachers use the tool.

More information on additional features and our progress is available at http://blog.coursefeeds.com.